Father, here I am coming before your holy presence only because of the riches of Your mercy and Your amazing grace made available to me by the precious shed blood of Jesus Christ.
O God, I come before You praying for the nation that You have sovereignly placed me in, the United States of America. A nation that has declared, for most of our history unapologetically, in God we trust but has fallen far from You and living in great rebellion against You. O God, I come confessing a small sample of our sins and ask You to have mercy on us and for You to turn the hearts of many back to You. As I confess these things I recognize not only our guilt before You as a nation but my personal guilt in many of these areas. Thank you for the forgiveness of sin and a life that is being transformed by Your Son Jesus.
O God forgive us for our history of racism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, and sexism. Forgive for our oppression of different groups and for being partial in the way that we've administered laws and justice. Forgive us for our greed and materialism - which causes us to be more concerned with the economy, profits, and status than lives. Forgive us for looking to our political leaders instead of to You.
O God forgive us for the laws that we have that pervert and distort Your design for sex, marriage, and family. Forgive us for teaching our children in our homes and in our schools that it is perfectly acceptable to engage in sex outside of the confines of marriage (which You defined as one man and one woman until death do them part). Forgive us for divorcing our spouses for any and every reason. Forgive us for accepting, embracing, and teaching that homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, and transgenderism are just different choices of how to live and even worse saying that You, and not sin, made people that way. Forgive us for our sensual and sexually immoral culture in which pornography is a multi-billion dollar industry.
Forgive us for teaching that the universe came into being all by itself and that certain creatures evolved from others when You created the heavens and the earth and made every creature after its own kind to reproduce in that manner. Forgive us for worshiping the universe rather than You, the Creator, who is to be forever praised. Forgive us for allowing women to make the choice to have a preborn baby in their womb killed through abortion. Forgive us for the culture of death that has pervaded our nation and society as we have spurned You, the Author of Life.
Forgive us for the entertainment that we consume that is filled with sensuality, sexual immorality, perverse language, coarse joking, greed, idolatry, and that often demeans and dishonors You. Forgive us for the idols that we have made of athletes, actors and actresses, singers, political leaders, and others who are famous and possess worldly riches. Forgive us, Your children, for wanting to gain fame and influence in the world by following the examples and patterns of those who live for their own glory and not Yours.
O God, thank you for having mercy on us and not dealing with us as our sins deserve. Pour Your Spirit out and cause many in our nation to realize Your great mercy and turn from their sin to Your Son the Lord Jesus Christ.
In this hour of great need, I ask that You would raise up men and women filled with Your Holy Spirit and committed to the Lord Jesus Christ and use them greatly to bring the Kingdom of God in the arenas of influence and power in our nation: government (leaders, governors, lawmakers, judges); businesses; media (Hollywood, newscasters, the press, etc.); the military and our first responders (police, fire, rescue, emergency); our churches (pastors, elders, deacons, membership, and missionaries); our families; our educational institutions (administration, public and private, colleges and universities, etc.).
God, may the United States truly be a great nation as we humble ourselves before You and turn back to You! In Jesus' name, Amen!
